The Shining

Jack Torrance is the new winter caretaker of the Overlook, a grand hotel nestled in the isolated Colorado mountains and cut off from civilisation during the harsh cold months. Here, with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, Jack attempts to escape the mistakes of his past and rebuild a life with his family. But the hotel has other ideas. Using Danny’s strange precognitive gift – his ‘shining’ – the evil that lurks inside the Overlook begins to stir, and take hold…

‘Obviously a masterpiece, probably the best supernatural novel in a hundred years’Peter Straub

Production Details

Bound in cloth blocked with a design by the artist

Set in Miller with Kingthings Trypewriter display

536 pages

Black & white illustrated title-page spread; 11 colour illustrations

Printed endpapers

10" x 6¾"

Crossroads novel

In his introduction, King calls The Shining his ‘crossroads novel’. His first two books – Carrie and ’Salem’s Lot – fall more easily into the category of pure horror, but with this iconic work he decided to reach further. Rather than a two-dimensional villain compelled to madness by supernatural forces, Jack Torrance emerges as a more complex character, one driven to evil by the ghosts of his past. Trapped in the toxic atmosphere of the Overlook, Jack is haunted by the memory of his violent, alcoholic father, the edges of the past and the present blur. Seething underneath the thrills and terror of one of the greatest horror novels ever written is an even more chilling conceit: ‘Aren’t memories the true ghosts of our lives? Do they not drive all of us to words and acts that we regret from time to time?’

‘As a storyteller, he is up there in the Dickens class’The Times

Made into a critically acclaimed film by Stanley Kubrick in 1980, King famously felt the movie, at its heart, told a different story to his novel. Award-winning artist Edward Kinsella has provided 11 colour illustrations that capture the book’s vision of the inhuman nature of the Overlook, as well as Jack Torrance’s descent into madness. The binding is emblazoned with a vividly monstrous wasp – a creature which appears as a harbinger of doom in the book – and the endpapers feature the ominous Edgar Allan Poe quote, ‘And the Red Death held sway over all’, repeated over and over in a distinctive typewriter font – a nod to the film version.

‘This inhuman place makes human monsters’

The Master of Modern Horror

Stephen king was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947. He graduated
with a BA in English from the University of Maine at Orono in
1970, and taught high-school English in Hampden, Maine, before
becoming a full-time writer in 1974, following the publication of his
first book, Carrie. He is the author of more than fifty novels, all
of them worldwide best-sellers, including ’Salem’s Lot (1975), Pet
Semetary (1983), and Misery (1987). He has also written six works
of non-fiction and nearly two hundred short stories. Many of his
books and novellas have been turned into celebrated films, and have
earned him Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British
Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003 the National Book Foundation
awarded King the Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American
Letters, and in 2015 he received a National Medal of Arts from
the United States National Endowment for the Arts for his contribution
to literature.

‘Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win’Stephen King (from the introduction)

Ghostly Artwork

Edward Kinsella was born in St Louis, Missouri. He graduated with honors from Ringling School of Art and Design in 2006, and his work has since been commissioned by a variety of prestigious magazines and publishers. He has also shown his fine art and illustration in a number of gallery exhibitions. His accolades include gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, and a Gold Award from Spectrum.